I thought it might be interesting to see just how folks earned their first spending money.

The first cash money that I remember making was bounty on crows. My grandmother being a good Irish women always had a big garden, both vegetables and flowers. So one day my Dad and I are over visiting and my grandfather said to my father "I need to borrow a pistol and your son for a week." I knocked down 17 that week at twenty five cents each. I bought a brace of 45 colt revolvers and a shit load of caps to go with them. At ten tears old I thought I was as Bad as Jesse James and faster that Matt Dillon.......

Paper route.

Hardly paid anything back then and got bit by dogs. Twice.

Scooping up shit and paper route.

mowing lawns at 9...bought my new schwinn at 10.....50 cents a pop...1960 money...push mower, garden shears to edge...

Newspaper route, selling vegetable seeds, and other crap door to door. First good money was when I got SCUBA certified at 12, and then my own dive business at 13. Scrubbing boat bottoms for $1 per foot.

Selling antique china and other antiques. I'd get up early,scour yardsales, then sell and trade up and down the antique stores on whidbey island,making cash and feeding my antique bottle, canning jar, insulator and cast iron cookware habits.

I was 8 or so and our neighbor had a massive hog problem, so my cousin and I offered to help cull the herd. He ended up paying us $10 per male and $25 per female that spring/summer.

We made a killing.

Still never seemed to thin the bastards back enough though

Odd. No gigolos, operators or petty thieves yet.

Paper Route for the Daily Olympian.. For me, it was a cash cow. I only had 42 houses to deliver to and they were all very wealthy. I made a crapload on tips, food and presents.

sweeping up hair at the corner barbershop after they closed for $10/week. Then got a paper route when i was 12. Had to be 12 to get a route.

Today my parents would probably be thrown in jail.

I wanted a Mongoose BMX bike which was way out of the budget for my Mom at the time. I ended up working for a family member a company she managed called sudden printing. I spent a couple hours each weekend for an entire summer stapling together what seemed to be endless paper pamphlets and finally bought that bike.

A few weeks later it was stolen right off my porch.. I eventually got it back, but I can save that story for a future first fist fight thread.

12 years, I had a newspaper route. The highlite was when I was picking up my papers at the office, I was introduced to Hoot Gibson, he was in town as the grand marshal for the rodeo. I asked him how could he shoot as much as he did without reloading and he replied "When you see me shootin, the bad guy is reloadin and when you see him shootin, I'm reloadin"

5th grade, i was selling pencils to kids at school and on the bus during a year long pencil fighting craze. Then the shcool shut me down because they sold pencils too and didnt like that i was stealing their business.

Worked in the orchards starting at 15.

Before that I had a small allowance for doing work around the house above and beyond my chores.

Got a job at the ORV park counting laps at the motocross races. Free admission and the best view in the place (tower on the track). Watch the race and write down everyone's numbers as the pass the start/finish line. $40 a day! Best job ever.


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